Cabinet provides support for 22 rural communities without water systems

Cabinet approved just over 677,000 Belize dollars in additional funding for the Ministry of Rural Transformation, Community Development, Labour & Local Government. The funds will be used to acquire a new well rig and support vehicle to provide access to water for 22 rural communities that currently do not have a water system and allow for effective maintenance to the 108 communities that currently depend on rural water systems. Chief Executive Officer, Valentino Shal explained that much of the infrastructure in some communities was left to age without being maintained.

Valentino Shal, Chief Executive Officer, Ministry of Labour: “This is important. You know we still have several communities without water. Unfortunately the equipment that we found here at the ministry are very old. They are about 20 or so years old and so they malfunction, the maintenance is very high and so we need to begin to put them out of commission because just maintaining very old equipment is not financially prudent. And of course we need the work to be done in the communities the people need water and so we were fortunate to get a contribution from the Government of Taiwan for most of the funds that we need to buy a new rig but as prices have gone up because of the global inflation the world is currently experiencing we needed additional funds for that so that was what it was approved in order to be able to afford a new rig but we want to retire the old ones and bring a new ones because the ones that we have are really old.” 

The total cost of the rig and support vehicle is 2.1 million Belize dollars, 1.5 million of which come from a grant from the Republic of China (Taiwan).